Discuss: BitComet & µtorrent

µTorrent is good... very good. It doesn't have as many features as BitComet, but what it does do it does well. It also uses hardly any memory or CPU time and is as stable as a rock.

µTorrent is still in very early stages, but I believe it will turn into 'the' client to use in a couple of months. It's already my client of choice for private trackers, at least until BitComet fixes the bug with DHT & private torrents.

But don't just take my word for it - give it a go for yourself and make your own mind up :)

I'm using v1.2.2 btw. I only started using it at v1.1.7 (3-4 versions ago) so I can't really comment on older versions.

I recently switched from Bitcomet to utorrent, and havent really missed any of the extra feautres of BC. I'm not knocking BC, just saying that it's worth it for that extra leanness that utorrent has.

Well, I have them both, and really tried on several files. Just to be able to compare, I even tried DL the same torrents with both clients, switching over from one to the other. Since my PC is still an older PIII 450 with Win98 - it was VERY promising. Like Dragosani, I think it WILL be great when it matures...
I'm using V 1.2.2, since the newer 1.2.3 Beta (supports Unicode!) is not yet compatible with Win98. BTW - I suggest to all uT users/non-users to subscribe to this thread - and they will be informed of all new versions !!!

For the time being (!) I'm staying with the good old BitComet. Here is my short list of the pros(+) and cons(-) relative to BC:


-1(+) Low on resources (CPU/MEM) , better for older PCs
-2(+) Actively being developed-enhanced with good reaction to users' requests
-3(+) I like the fully sortable peers' list with a country ID (real flag!)
-4(+) Embedded Graphical speed charts - nice
-5(+) File "pieces" distribution - nice (but useless...)
-6(+) A very nice DL scheduler (although I don't use it...)


-a(-) LOWER DL SPEED, and LOWER ACCELERATION (=the time it takes it to speedup) - this is VERY hard to measure. It is my personal judgment , that has to do with other basic reasons - mentioned bellow
-b(-) DHT support - newly added (Mainline DHT). It looks like it is NOT so widely spread/efficient as BC's implementation, and might have some bugs.
-c(-) No pear-data-exchange
-d(-) Less effective Disk caching
Note: b-d are the main reasons for lower speed.
-e(-) no Unicode support (for Win9 and only beta support (new) for others.
-f(-) Poorer statistics-log (no average time/speed etc)
-g(-) Less informative on tracker's reactions (no error codes, # of peers returned)
-h(-) Lack some "comfort" features - file extentions, less preferences, renaming destinations, etc
-i(-) A lot of info on data "pieces" - that is really not useful and takes a lot of GUI space
-j(-) So called "advanced options" are not user-friendly , and hard to understand

Anyway - a bit more development and it can be ahead of BC !!!

Edit:
Some more points/info - can be read here: http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php ... 820#p21820

Edit2:
uTorrent V 1.2.3 build 360 - is now running on ALL Windows versions (98 included...) and supports Unicode !!!

Originally Posted by Redleer

doesnt bitcomet use mainline dht too?

Yes, I think so. But it "feels" like it's working better... I get more sources and higher speed faster on BitComet.

Originally Posted by RTO

Originally Posted by rafi_d

...

You forgot one thing:
BitComet still has the best file selection system. It's the only one that lets you choose the files before you start downloading.

Partially right... uT does not have to auto-start downloading . You do press the "go" first. So you can easily - un-select any file you like in the "files" tab before that

The first Torrent client I ever used was BitTornado(then Shad0ws experimental client). Then I switched to Torrent Storm. Shortly after I decided I wanted to make my own torrents. I hated finding a tracker, so I switched to Azureus. Azureus was great cause of the built in tracker. But I then got tired of making my own torrents. So I didn't need Azureus anymore. I switched back to BitTornado. But then the DHT showed up in Azureus, the official bitTorrent client and Bitcomet. I knew Azureus was a resource hog. And since BitComet and the Official client were sharing 1 network, I decided BitComet had the best DHT.

Then along came utorrent. Its just too small to pass up. And now thatBitComet is banned in so many places, uTorrent is my client of choice.